Weight-management tips from a 4-year old

The other day Rachel was messing around with our bathroom scale, and she asked me "why do we even need these things, anyway?"

Me: Oh, I don't know - people use them to see how heavy they are, so they can tell if they're getting too fat.

Rachel: I don't get it. Can't they just look down?!

I love the way kids simplify things.

And speaking of weight, I'm going to have to start worrying about mine if Rachel and Lizza keep bringing me morning snacks like this one:

They are so kind to look after me while I blog:

Except I'm not so sure how I feel about it when they bring me trays full of tasty treats like this one:

Because did you see what was in that lower right hand corner?

"They're fish-sticks, Mom!!"

Visitors from Oklahoma

My sister Rebekah just moved to Oklahoma last month (her husband is going to dental school there), so we took advantage of the fact that we are only one state away from each other, and last week she drove down for a visit with her two girls (Mariah is 2 1/2, and Elaine just turned 1).

We spent a lot of our time at the neighborhood pool (we even miraculously got one picture with all 7 of the kids in it (click to enlarge; 3rd picture from the left) They're not in the greatest of poses, and Oliver might be under water, but it was the best we could do):

It was so fun watching Henry and Elaine play with each other, because they are so close in age (she's about 3 weeks older). For the most part, they got along really well, and they'd just kind of follow each other around. (There was one time that Henry decided to claim a particular push-toy, and he went on the offensive to keep Elaine away from it, but she was a great sport about the pushing, shoving, and eye-gouging that Henry was dishing out. Who knew he could be such a bully?) These are just a few of the pictures we got of the two of them hanging out together (and I promise Henry doesn't just wear his diaper all day long - we really had been doing a lot of swimming):

Bekah and I also had our share of fun. We left the kids with Daniel a few different times and went out for some sister time. One of the nights we drove down to Austin. I showed Bekah the capitol building, and we watched the bats fly out from Congress Bridge (a true Austin experience!). We ate dinner at Pita Pit and then went really wild and played darts in a bar on Sixth Street (Bekah won).

Hooray for sisters living close enough to visit!

More Henry

Henry is at that fun stage where he loves to spend all day doing things like this:



And this:


And this:



And the thing is, he gets away with it all because he is just so darn cute we don't even know what to do:

We are overcome by his cuteness.

A Disgruntled Knight

This is what happens when you try to sleep in on Saturday morning so you take your baby upstairs to the playroom and ask his older siblings to please take good care of him:

The Best Thing about Summer

(click to enlarge)

(click to enlarge)

Happy 4th!

All the kids in their red, white, and blue. I don't know what Oliver's doing. Practicing covering his ears for loud fireworks?

Getting ready for a little fireworks show. Hey, kids - look at me! C'mon, look at me! Thanks, Liz.

Okay, let's try again. Everybody look ate me! Lizza, what happened? I thought I had you. Where's everyone looking? Oliver? Okay.

Fine, last try. Lizza is apparently worn out from her effort in the previous pictures, so I guess I'll settle with four out of five.

Tristan and Oliver with sparklers:

A blurry Rachel with sparklers. (Is a blurry picture of someone doing something cute worse than no picture of them doing that cute thing? I don't know. I just couldn't delete it, though. Clearly I need to take some photography lessons.)

Lizza doing sparklers:

Henry wishing he could get his hands on some sparklers:

Tristan learning the fine art of getting the heck out of there after lighting a firework:

More sparkler fun. (In the dark this time!)

Rachel's Art

Since Rachel pretty much spends most of her life drawing pictures, I thought I'd put together a little sample of things she's drawn over the last six months or so (it was hard to choose, seeing as she has about four thousand drawings saved up).

Once I had some picked out, I had her look at them with me and give me little descriptions of what they were - this was probably the most fun part to me, because seriously, I don't know if I've ever seen a 4-year old draw scenes with such detail, and Rachel trying to explain it all was pretty entertaining.

Anyway, a lot of the drawings are typical little girl subjects - princesses, castles, horses, etc. Then there are several family scenes with various parties going on. Toward the end of the slideshow I stuck in a few drawings that show her older brothers' influence on her artwork (monsters, bad guys, etc.), and then of course there is a whole series of Harry Potter drawings.


(Slideshow tip: you may have to pause the slideshow in order to have time to read her description and see the picture before it moves on to the next one. Once you pause it, you should be able to move it manually to the next one whenever you're done.)